Dallas Mavericks Blog

What a shock, Mavericks aren’t the same without Dirk Nowitzki

Sometimes, you know what you know and after a few days go by, you still know exactly what you knew.
If you understood that, you know where Rick Carlisle is coming from. The Mavericks knew when Caron Butler was lost for the season and Dirk Nowitzki was recovering from a sprained right knee that they weren’t going to be as good as they were with those two players.
Well, duh.
“We know the same things that we knew going into it – that our margins for error were going to be slimmer,” Carlisle said.
However, that doesn’t mean that there’s any surrender in the ranks until Nowitzki returns, which should be sometime in the next week or so but will in no way be rushed by the Mavericks.
So during his absence, when the Mavericks are 2-5, Carlisle has had the chance to see how other players respond to not having the face of the franchise on the court.
“And we’re going to continue to probe it and look at other lineups as well,” he said. “The (Sasha) Pavlovic signing gives us a chance to look at him with some different groups out there. We got to stay positive knowing that we’re in a tough period here and we’re working to get healthy.”
The Mavericks have the potential to right the ship in the next week, no matter whether Nowitzki is on the court or not. Indiana, San Antonio, Memphis and Detroit might not exactly represent three dogs and a vicious cat. But it’s not far from it. The Spurs will be hard to beat no matter who plays. But the other three teams are mediocre at best.
If, as Carlisle says, the Mavericks have enough talent to get the job done, these are games they should win. We’ll see how it turns out.
–Eddie Sefko